1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the routing of data streams, and in particular streams constituted by data packets.
2. Description of Related Art
Networks today provide connectivity to a variety of devices such as servers, personal computers, memory storage systems, etc. Most networks provide a wide range of applications and technologies to allow for a multitude of communications to one or more destinations.
As is known in the art, illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,522, a network may employ a multi-layer network element to forward received packets from an input port to one or more output ports. The received packets may be scanned for different types of forwarding information, i.e., layer 2 information, layer 3 information, layer 4 information, etc. Based on the results of the scan, a determination is made as to the most appropriate combination of layer 2 or layer 3 forwarding decisions for the received packet. Once the forwarding decisions are made, the received packet is transmitted to the destination.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,725 relates to a network utilizing a router to switch a packet between a source and a destination. The router may include a plurality of ports connected to various sources and destinations. The ports connected to sources are termed input ports and each input port includes a data handler. The router also includes output ports and a memory divided into a plurality of memory banks. The data handler divides each packet into one or more fixed length cells. The fixed length cells are transmitted to an input switch that writes a single cell into a cell slot time span to each memory bank. The input switch reads a key from the packet and, based on a destination indicated by a key, an output port associated with the destination is determined. An output switch is alerted to the determination and transfers the determination to the appropriate output port. The output port initiates transfer of the packet from the memory and the output switch.